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Getting a Second Chance...and a Third...

October 06, 2010

Jeff Winston has had an average life. He and his wife Linda haven’t been able to have children, but they have spent the last twenty years together. In 1988, when Linda calls Jeff at work to talk, Jeff suddenly suffers a heart-attack. He feels the excruciating pain; he feels as if he’s fading away. Then, he feels himself breathe into nothingness and death, but how can he feel if he is dead?

When Jeff opens his eyes, he finds himself in his dorm room at Emory University in 1963. He is eighteen, but still has the memories of his life. Jeff has just won the opportunity to do something everyone wants: rewind and live life again. He now knows what the future holds for sports, stocks, President Kennedy, and anything else he remembers. There are so many ways that Jeff can take advantage of this wisdom, and that is exactly what he does. He relives his life with new wealth, love, and luck along with new heartbreaks, but everything is not as he remembers. The movie, Starsea, is released in theaters and is bigger than Jaws will ever be, not to mention, it is 4 years earlier. The past is not how Jeff remembers. Does this Starsea movie hold the answers to his questions; a meaning to his lives?

Ken Grimwood’s novel Replay is a fascinating sci-fi adventure. Once I started reading it, I could not put it down. Even though Jeff Winston keeps reliving the past 25 years of his life, every replay is different, and he learns and experiences distinctly different things. Jeff gains wisdom from each of his lives, but the most important question that he needs to answer may not matter in the end. Replay reminds readers to seize the day because the possibilities are endless, even though our lives may not be.